


Like Angels With Wild Eyes

by rivendellrose



Category: Star Trek: Discovery
Genre: (sort of?), F/M, Friends to Lovers, Post-Season/Series 02 Finale
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-16
Updated: 2019-06-16
Packaged: 2020-05-13 05:43:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,126
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19244992
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rivendellrose/pseuds/rivendellrose
Summary: After the events of "Such Sweet Sorrow," Ash and L'Rell have a conversation that exposes a lot of feelings, and eventually leads to a decision, and greater intimacy between them.





	Like Angels With Wild Eyes

**Author's Note:**

> Many thanks as always to [gaslightgallows](https://archiveofourown.org/users/hearts_blood/pseuds/gaslightgallows), who beta-read almost all of this and provided her usual enthusiasm when things were going well and wise counsel when I was banging my head against things, and to [deborah_judge](https://archiveofourown.org/users/deborah_judge), who provided much-needed encouragement at a vital impasse that I wasn't the only person in the universe who wanted this to be written. 
> 
> **Note:** Sex is discussed here, and also happens. It's not at all graphic, and it is entirely consensual. There is also some discussion of managing past trauma, including trauma that was interpreted in a sexual sense. If you have reason to believe that any of this might not be comfortable for you, whether in general or in the specific context of these characters, please take care in deciding whether or not to proceed.

For several minutes after Discovery and the little point of light leading it disappeared into the unknowable, L’Rell pretended that other matters required her attention. She directed the clearing-up of the remaining Control ships, and communicated with Captain Pike, and then ordered her helmsman to set coordinates back into Klingon space. And only then, when she had given him as much time as she dared to manage his emotions, did she look again at Ash Tyler.

His expression was that of a man who had lost all that he cared for in the universe, but he met her gaze willingly enough.

“Come,” she said, “I would speak with you in private, so that we may arrange your return to the Federation ships.”

He inclined his head and waited as she preceded him off the bridge. In the lift, he said quietly, “You could have handled that with Pike.”

“I could have. But as I understand it he is not your direct superior. And I wanted a moment alone with you.” She sighed. “Our son is a man grown, now. He does not need our silence to protect him.  No one who found their way to Boreth now would think it likely he could be ours.”

“He’s still albino. They might well guess.”

“Any with the wit to think of Boreth as a hiding place, and the courage both to go there and to risk the wrath of the monks by attacking one of their own, perhaps.” She shrugged. “That is not many. And my position now is not so tenuous as it was… and perhaps I am not as hard and wise as Philippa Georgiou would have me be. If you would come home—”

Ash almost smiled at that. “Qo’noS is no more my home, now, than Earth is. You know that.”

“I do. And yet you must live somewhere. And since you chose not to go with her—”

A stillness came over him that looked to L’Rell like grief masquerading as certainty. “Section 31 needs to be rebuilt. They’re a place where I can finally fit in, maybe. And they need someone who can see more than one color in a situation.”

“And that needs to be you?”

“It could be. It’s a place where I can be useful.”

L’Rell stopped the lift and watched him for a long moment, and then asked, very quietly, “Did she refuse you? I thought, when I saw you again on that ship, wearing their uniform—”

He shook his head. “No. She… I don’t know what might have happened if I’d stayed. But there were… more important things at stake.”

She stared at him. He had _chosen_ this? Briefly she suspected a lie to save his dignity, and that she could have left alone despite the hurt of knowing he didn’t trust her with this wound. But he had always been a terrible liar, and there was no deception in the bleak, resigned way he looked at her now.

“Fool! You are an even greater fool than Voq and I together!” L’Rell snapped, stunned even in her own mind at the fury that overtook her. “At least when we each made our choices, no other paths branched before us. You – what are you doing? Punishing yourself for living?” She turned away and punched the wall so she wouldn’t punch his delicate Human face.

“I don’t see how this is any of your—”

“Your love killed mine! You know this! He died so _you_ could live and be with her. And then you scorn that, and cast it away as if it is nothing. I hope your love eats you from the inside, Ash Tyler. I hope it never leaves you a moment’s peace. And I hope, if she returns, that she has forgotten you, because she, at least, does not deserve to waste away in longing and waiting for your foolishness to come to an end.” She spat on the floor before slamming her palm against the lift controls. The doors opened. “Go. Take your shuttle and leave, and never let me see your face again.”

“L’Rell—”

Now she knew those eyes, the same wounded-beast look he had worn when she chose to kill Voq so that he might live. She could not look at him. “ _Go!_ Or this time the head that I hold up before the high council will be real!”

He took two steps, then stopped in the doorway of the turbolift and turned back to face her again.

_Fool. Brave fool, brave in all the wrong directions, but a fool nonetheless_.

“I’m not trying to hurt you, L’Rell. I’m just… I need something that belongs to me. I need a purpose. I was never like that before – I could’ve been happy just staying on Discovery forever as their security chief, or going away with Michael wherever she went. But having Voq’s memories—”

“Do not speak his name. You do not deserve it.”

“Maybe not, but he’s here.” Ash touched his temple. “And I’m pretty sure he’s the reason a quiet life doesn’t fit for me anymore. He’s why I feel like I need something bigger. So if you’re angry at me, be angry at him, too.”

Her lip curled. “Do you think I am not already angry with him? If he had had more sense, more patience – if he had seen through Kol’s thin compliments and dramatics, then we would not be here in this way. If his love had been half as strong as his ambition, half as strong as—” She choked on that, the truth she had always done her best to avoid in thinking about both Voq and Ash Tyler.

“If he’d loved you as much as I love Michael, you mean.”

She could not answer. Admitting the truth even in silence hurt her more than she could tolerate.

Ash closed the space between them, and let the turbolift door close again behind him. “I don’t know exactly what went wrong in your plans, L’Rell. But he loved you.”

“Not enough,” L’Rell growled.

“As much as he could.” Ash shook his head and seemed to struggle to find words for an instant, or perhaps struggle against himself to reveal another man’s secrets held within his own mind. “He was… his life was so empty of love. A father who refused to claim him, a mother who cast him off at the first opportunity… T’Kuvma was the first person in his life who expected anything but disappointment from him, but _you_ were the first to love him. He didn’t know what to do with that, and he certainly didn’t feel worthy, but he returned it as fiercely as his heart would let him feel anything but the need to prove himself.”

“Then why?” Her voice was hoarse with the need to scream, to yell, to howl her pain to the skies all over again, and yet she felt exhausted. Too tired to rail and fight, with energy enough only to look to the only person who could give her even half a satisfying answer.

“I don’t know.” His ridiculous eyes were so large and dark and soft, she half wanted to strangle him and half kiss him. “Maybe it’s just that he was buried more deeply than you thought under the false… under me. Maybe my fear and confusion about you made it harder somehow – even when I longed to see you, I was terrified of you at the same time. Maybe the matriarchs’ process didn’t work right, or… I don’t know. I don’t think it was a matter of pure strength of will, though. I sure as hell don’t feel stronger than him.”

“And yet you are here, and he is gone.”

“It’s not all about strength or courage. Sometimes it’s just dumb luck. Or fate, or—”

“I had forgotten.” L’Rell snorted. “Humans believe in living gods, don’t they? At least Klingons can see that the madness of the universe shows to any who look that the gods are long dead. If they weren’t, perhaps life would be more sensible.”

“Maybe.” Ash smiled. “Maybe the ancients made a mistake, then, in killing them.”

“They were more trouble than they were worth,” she grumbled bitterly.

“Just like me?”

“Would I twice offer you a place on Qo’noS if you were so worthless?”

Ash laughed softly at that. “You’re too honorable for your own good, clearly.”

“This, at least, I already know.”

Ash reached out, tentatively at first, then with more confidence, and cupped her scarred cheek in his palm. “He loved you, L’Rell. I swear it. The part of him that’s still in me, I feel that love whenever I look at you. And both of us can easily see how brave you are, and how deeply honorable, and how, just, _worthy_. Whatever it is that happened with Voq to put us where we are now, it wasn’t because you aren’t enough.”

She closed her eyes and allowed herself, just for a moment, to turn into his hand and nuzzle it. He smelled entirely different from Voq – she had noticed that right away after the transformation, but it still unnerved her at times, how much the matriarchs had rewritten every inch, every cell of her lover into this strange creature, neither Human nor Klingon. And yet it was a smell she knew, and trusted, and loved, in spite of herself.

“Stay with me,” she said. “Do not go back. Let this Section 31 handle itself. Let it die off if it will. You owe it nothing.”

“But I owe Starfleet—”

“Nothing. They sent you away.”

He laughed softly, and she opened her eyes to watch him, looking at her with a gentle, fond amusement. “So did you.”

“I did,” she agreed. “But when they laid you in my cell, screaming and tearing at your own flesh because you didn’t know what you were… Perhaps I should have learned, then, not to make the same mistake twice. I thought I had, but I was so angered by what Kol-sha threatened that I let myself be lured into the same tactical error again.”

“The error of letting me out of your sight?” Ash laughed again. “I do seem to make a lot of mistakes whenever we’re apart, don’t I?”

“You have always been more passion than plan. But… yes, and no. What I meant was that I should not have told you never to come back. Whatever you call it – fate, gods, blood,” she waved her hand to show her indifference to these words—“you and I are bound together. Perhaps all will go better if we accept that. I know you do not see me as you see Michael Burnham, but we are still… comrades in arms.”

“Friends,” Ash corrected her, and, with one final brush of his thumb across her jaw, removed his hand from her cheek and instead took her hand in his. “And a pretty damned impressive team, too. How many did we kill that day, alone, before Georgiou came and finished the last few?”

“I lost count.” L’Rell laughed, and if her head was a little giddy, well, she hoped he would not notice. “Enough to be worthy of a song, I am sure.”

Ash looked down, and pressed his lips together in solemn thought. “You told them that Kol-sha killed me after I killed your child. How will you explain that, if I come back?”

Her heart sank. “I don’t know. On this ship, my word is unquestioned. But at home, in the council—”

“You shouldn’t risk your position just because my job prospects are looking a little thin.”

“Stay anyway, just for a time,” she said, the words requiring as much courage as any battle she had ever walked into. As much as agreeing to lose him, then regain him, then lose him again. “Even just for tonight.”

A slow sigh, almost a groan, escaped him, his eyes still focused on their joined hands, and something dark and guilty clutched at L’Rell’s throat.

“Unless… What you said before, about when I touch you, if that is still true, then I would make no demands. If you fear to be alone with me—”

“Not that. It’s just… complicated. I know, in my mind, that what I remember happened between you and Voq, and that it was very much consensual. But I still remember feeling it as an invasion, when it came back to me later. And sometimes, when you touch me, that feeling is too strong for me to remember the reality.”

L’Rell pulled her hand back, just as she had done before, but this time Ash caught her fingers and squeezed them.

“It’s not your fault, L’Rell. The problem’s in my head, not anything you did. You couldn’t have known those memories would get twisted up and turned inside out the way they did.”

“And yet if I could undo that, I would. I have made many mistakes, done many wrong things in my life, but that… that I would never do. Even in war—”

“I know.” He lifted her hand and, much to her surprise, kissed the back of it. She couldn’t feel his lips through the half-gauntlet she wore, but his breath was warm on the exposed first knuckles of her fingers. “I know you. You would never do something like that. I just didn’t understand, back then, and it was the only way my mind could make sense of what I was remembering.”

“I am still… it is a dishonor to me. All of it. All that we did in service of that war...”

“I forgive you.” He had to say the words in English, because the concept didn’t translate well into her language, but she had learned much of that tongue in the past two years, and she understood it well enough. She had, at one time, said the same very carefully to Admiral Cornwell, in regards to the attempted bombing of Qo’noS, and been glad to watch some of the weight ease from her friend’s shoulders.

It really did make it easier to breathe.

“You’re my friend,” Ash continued. “And the only person left in this universe, now, who I know I can trust completely.”

"As you are to me." Cautiously, aware of giving him the space to back away if he wanted, L'Rell stepped close to him and breathed in the scent of his skin and his hair. The pheromones, the particular musk of Voq, were gone, but she could almost imagine smelling them now, and the heat from his body, though cooled from what she remembered, hung in the air around them.

Some memory of those times must have lived on in him, as well, because he closed the space between them and kissed her.

It was different than she remembered, unsure and even a little awkward at first, but then more confident, more sure... and, yes, more passionate as his fingers dug into the hair gathered at the base of her skull and he pressed more firmly against her, pulling her to him. He tasted different, and his teeth were strange, and his hands so smooth and blunt-tipped compared to what she remembered, but none of that mattered. He was not Voq, nor even Klingon, but neither was he a stranger. Her blood sang to finally be as she had long feared they never could be.

"We're going to have to get out of this lift at some point," he murmured against her skin once they had broken for breath. "Or your crew really will know something is up."

"Whatever they know, they will keep silent."

"You have that much faith in them?"

"Jealous?"

He laughed. "More impressed."

"It is much easier to keep one ship loyal than all the council and their followers. But you are right that perhaps we should not test them. You will come with me?"

"Where? To your quarters?"

"That is my thought."

His expression seemed to close off for a second, and L'Rell steeled herself to be refused again. But then he nodded. "Yes. If anything can rewrite those memories... and I'm tired of being afraid of something that didn't happen. And you... under it all, the fear and everything else... I've wanted this. I thought for a while it was some kind of mental break, or going back to a way I'd found to stay alive or something, but it was really just Voq's feelings coming through sometimes. And then not just his feelings. The way you've been here for me and... all of it. Yes."

* * *

They stayed apart, just barely, as they walked to L'Rell's quarters – close enough that Ash could feel the heat from L'Rell's skin, and his hand accidentally brushed against hers with an almost absurd electricity a few times, but far enough apart that the members of her crew that they passed didn't react, at least visibly. Either she was right about their personal loyalty to her, or they were good at hiding a lack of reaction. He hoped it was the former.

Her quarters were dark and warm, like most Klingon rooms, with a ruddy glow to the light and a faint haze to the air that carried a smoky, not-quite-volcanic scent from an ornate incense brazier. L'Rell's armor gleamed in the dim light, and her pale gray eyes seemed to glow out of the darkness. Voq, he remembered, had always been particularly enchanted by those eyes. So, in a fearful and haunted way, had he. But he'd seen so much in them over the time since his two sides settled their differences that he understood Voq's perspective better than his own, now. Those eyes, clear as crystal, had a habit of showing more than L'Rell ever meant them to. And right now, she was afraid.

Part of him that was usually a lot quieter balked at the exactness of that word – _fear_ wasn't something that a Klingon typically admitted to, particularly not in interpersonal relations. Defeating fear in the face of battle, perhaps, but to be afraid just because of someone else's feelings? L’Rell was better than that, Voq had always felt. A true warrior cared little for what others thought of him, the memory insisted, even though Ash could recall perfectly well that Voq had always cared a great deal for exactly that, and battled most strenuously to be seen not caring.

L'Rell tried to seem that way, too. She'd gotten better at it over the last year, but right now all her bravado and hard-won gravitas seemed as thin as a breath.

"If you're not up for this—”

She laughed. "That is not the problem."

"Then what is?"

"If you... remember wrongly, again..." She pressed her lips together for an instant, and glanced away. "I do not want to hurt you."

It would have been nice to laugh this off, tell her that wouldn’t happen, that it couldn’t possibly happen. But he owed her the truth. “I know you don’t. And it might happen. I might… misremember again. But if we take things slow, and talk, and if I know you’ll stop if I say to stop…”

“I will.”

All of this was about as far from Klingon courtship as he could imagine, and Ash almost wanted to laugh to think of the difference between the times L’Rell and Voq had fallen into bed – or any convenient dark corner – together, and this. But L’Rell’s eyes were deadly serious, and she held herself so still that he could almost feel the tension in her, waiting to be released. “Then I think we’ll be okay. And if something does happen, we’ll handle it together. Okay?”

“Yes.” And one of the most beautiful things about L’Rell was that once she had heard him and agreed to his terms, her hesitation seemed to disappear. It wasn’t that she was simple – anything but – only she took him at his word on this as on everything, and that was a marvelous change from the twisty, complicated world of Section 31, where everything had always been a half-lie or a manipulation, or both. “And you will tell me, too, if I risk injuring you physically.”

There had been blood, on more than one occasion and on more than one side, when she and Voq had been together, and those cuts and gashes hadn’t been the only injuries they’d sustained in lovemaking, either. “I will.”

“Good.” L’Rell tilted her head slightly, examining him in a way that reminded Ash, with some amusement and a little discomfort, of a hawk looking at a rabbit. The traitorous memories emerged for an instant, and he braced himself, prepared to fight them. He was strapped to a table, screaming in agony, blood pooling on his skin and dripping into his eyes, and she was… looking at him with an expression that, knowing her as he did now, he saw was not the desire to watch, but refusal to let herself look away. Bearing witness to his transformation, much as it pained her, and forcing herself to bear it as he bore the pain.

She could have walked away. It would have been more comfortable for her, certainly, to refuse to watch as her lover was carved apart and remade, but she had stayed with him. Waiting, just as she did now.

Her eyes narrowed. Some shadow of what he had just experienced must have been visible to her. “Are you…”

“I’m fine.” He drew a breath – a little shaky, but enough – and flashed a weak but triumphant smile before pulling her to him.

She twined her fingers in the hair at the base of his skull, and nuzzled his ear, her cheek against his. His senses weren’t what Voq’s had been, but he remembered this as a way of sharing scent, and rubbed back against her, his hands tight on her hips. Even to a human’s weaker sense of smell there was still something about her… all the scents he would have expected from her clothes, of oiled leather and skin-warmed metal over a strange, inhuman musk and something earthy and mossy. It was strange, remembering that there had once been more to that smell, like the memory of a song he couldn’t quite bring all the way into focus, and that it had _meant_ more, too. As it was, the memory of a memory prickled at his skin and made his heart beat faster, even as L’Rell trailed an experimental talon down the back of his neck, just to the side of his vertebrae. Ash growled and tugged her closer in response, then set to work on finding the closures of her armor. 

His own black leather uniform seemed to provide L’Rell with a bit more annoyance, probably because she, unlike him, didn’t have any memories of undoing similar clothing. She got there eventually, though, with determination, some cursing under her breath, and a little help from him.

“These clothes were not designed with my hands in mind,” she muttered, aggravated, as she shoved his undershirt up and out of her way.

“Not especially,” Ash had to agree. “They’re beautiful hands, though.”

She snorted.

“No, really. Why would you be surprised at that?”

“I have met Human women,” L’Rell informed him.

Which, Ash had to admit, was a fair basis for protest, now that he thought of it. The image of Michael – or any other woman he’d known in his life as a Human, for that matter – with hands like L’Rell’s was admittedly strange, verging on ridiculous. But L’Rell wasn’t Human, and though he could remember shuddering at the thought of her talons before he’d gotten himself figured out, that memory was even more distant, now, than some of Voq’s.

“I like your hands.” Ash lifted one of them, palm to palm with his, and interlaced his fingers with hers slowly, taking in the contrast between the colors of their skin and the shapes of them. Michael’s hands were small, delicate despite all her strength. No one could reasonably call L’Rell’s hands delicate except for maybe a Klingon man – they were as large as Ash’s own, now, but he did remember they’d looked a bit smaller compared to Voq’s – but there was an elegance to their shape, beauty in their strength, and the talons, long and dangerous as they were, were also fascinating. And felt amazing when carefully applied. “And I’m not saying that just to make you feel better. You’re different. But you’re beautiful.”

“I feel the same.”

He laughed softly. “Good. Because there is one thing you might have forgotten… when I was changed… the matriarchs didn’t leave anything that would have given me away as not Human.”

“I would not forget that.”

“Okay, just… thought I should bring it up, in case...”

L’Rell stared at him in deadly silence. She wasn’t going to let him leave that sentence unfinished.

“So you wouldn’t be disappointed,” he finished, heat rising on his cheeks. That was a strange feeling, comparing his current self to the Klingon self of his memory and finding himself the one lacking. Even L’Rell admitted that Voq had been a bit of a difficult fool at times – he’d been impulsive and brash, deeply insecure, prone to taking insult at anything and everything, and, even for a Klingon, had had significant anger management issues. But he’d been the one L’Rell had taken as a lover, and while Ash Tyler had no personal interest in having what he could only think of as unnecessary, extra sexual equipment… it was what she was used to. What she was expecting. What she, he couldn’t help but think, deserved.

“You cannot disappoint me.”

“I mean, that’s kind of you, but—”

“I do not mean it kindly. I mean it in earnest: in this, you cannot disappoint me. By fearing me, by leaving me, by failing to be what I know you are and failing to pursue what I know you love – in these ways, I can be disappointed in you. In these ways, at times, I regret the bond you hold on me. But this? Coming to me here, loving me again as I have wished you would, even if it is only this once, and only as friends?” Her hand cupped his cheek, and silver-gray eyes held his close and tight as any embrace. “Trusting me with your pain as you have? In this, Ash Tyler, you can only honor me and make me glad.”

“You know what I mean. Physically—”

“I know that you are not the same as Voq. I know that other methods may be required – for both of us, perhaps – to bring the pleasure he and I found easily. I do not care.”

“I thought… I thought you just wanted me because I’m all that’s left of him,” Ash admitted.

To her credit, L’Rell gave this statement the consideration it deserved. “At first, yes, that was my thinking. Voq and I had intended for his transformation not to be the end of our relationship, and when I found you again I was eager to resume that. And then, after, there was still a spark of him alive in you. Voq’s memories live in you, and I take joy in that. But I have also come to know Ash Tyler. A brave man, tempered and yet not hard; a man who would risk his life to raise a child he had only a distant part in fathering, who would fight back to back with me, and tell me things, dark things, that pain him.” She lifted his hand in hers, rubbed it against her cheek, and took a breath with her nose against his pulse before brushing her lips against the skin. “I have not always been glad of it, but it is not only the memory of Voq that I love in you.”

Ash listened to this with a feeling somewhere between guilt and hope, horror and relief. He’d wondered, of course – it had been impossible not to, back when L’Rell told him that if he wanted to be seen as Voq he should love her as Voq had. But that, too, had told him that it was Voq she was looking for, and that he couldn’t give her, and didn’t want to be able to except in momentary fragments. But he’d never realized, in all their time together… And now he remembered how she had acted when they met again on Discovery, unexpectedly, and felt like the greatest fool ever. He’d known that his feelings for her were more complicated than a mere lingering effect of someone else’s love – how had it not occurred to him that hers might be, too?

“I’m sorry. I had no idea. I thought it was just… I thought you wanted me because you missed him, that’s all.”

“I am capable of seeing the difference,” she reminded him, her jaw jerked up in defiance.

“Physically, sure, but you have to admit that a lot of times you’ve treated me as if—”

“I have not always been wise in this,” she admitted, the tips of her talons tracing complicated patterns like filigree across his back and arms. “I try to see all of you, but sometimes I fail. The Human Ash Tyler, I do not understand him as well as I do when I see the Klingon in you. But I am not such a fool as to disregard what I can have in favor of what I cannot.”

No, Ash thought as she peeled away the last bits of his clothing and maneuvered them back toward her bed, that was his specialty. Wanting so badly for Michael to forgive him that he couldn’t step back and give her time to process her understandable fear and grief, wanting to prove himself on Qo’noS rather than being willing to stay quiet in the shadows as would have been wise, wanting to make a grand gesture like redeeming Section 31 instead of going away with Michael, who he loved and who was finally, just maybe, ready to think about welcoming him back… Ever since he’d woken up with Voq’s memories whispering in his mind, he’d been reaching, grasping for what he couldn’t quite have, and always ignoring whatever was just within his reach. If it was something he might, just possibly, be judged worthy of having, then it wasn’t worth his effort anymore, because there was always something else, something bigger and better and more likely to prove his worth, just beyond it. _I was never like this before_. _It’s all his fault. He ruins everything for me, even now that he’s been dead for almost a year…_

He would never be the same again, and it was easy, and justified, to resent that. But L’Rell, naked and gloriously beautiful in a way that the old Ash Tyler, alone in his own, untouched, Human mind would never have entirely been able to accept or comprehend, pulling him down to the mattress with her, her breath and lips and tongue hot against his throat and her thick black hair pooling down her bare shoulders and breasts in a way that even Voq had never known, somehow reminded him there were good sides to all the changes in the universe, too.

Voq only ever seen her shaved for war. It was strange how powerful it made Ash feel, having a piece of her, however small, that Voq had never possessed. Voq had loved her, had been her lover and the heart of all her future dreams, but… when it came down to reality, Ash Tyler had now known L’Rell longer than Voq had, and he knew her better, and in a better life than the one she’d planned with Voq. He knew her vulnerability and her mercy, and the deep wells of courage and determination within her. Voq had known that she could have been a great leader… but it was Ash Tyler who saw her achieve that, and saw, too, how much it cost her. He wished he could make it easier for her, while at the same time wanting to sit back and watch her conquer it all and crow her victory to the sky. She wanted someone at her side, but didn’t _need_ anyone. What she saw was needed, she was always strong enough to do on her own.

In that, she reminded him of Michael. She’d do it all, remake the whole universe in a better shape, just by the strength of her mind and her will and her hands, and she _could_ do it alone… but what a privilege it had been, however briefly, to be the one who she trusted to watch her back and hold her when she felt it might be too much for her to handle.

That should have made what he was doing harder, thinking of what he’d lost, but… he’d lost so much. Let it all slip through his fingers, and he didn’t want to let regret and the longing for what he couldn’t have do that to him again. Not here, not now.

L’Rell arched against him and straddled his hips, and for half a second he could feel the memories coming back. In the worst of those memories she had been on top of him, and the later realization that the reason those memories stuck out was because Voq had been so enamored of them and yet so embarrassed by his delight at this faint surrender and his secret certainty that L’Rell was better and stronger than him, that didn’t help, it didn’t stop the way the true memory drowned in what he’d built up around it, the terror of this monster looming over him… beautiful, and cared for, and concerned, as her sharp gaze noted something about him changing.

Maybe it was the rhythm of his breath, or the look in his eyes, or, hell, maybe it was the smell of him, arousal suddenly taking on a tang of fear. Maybe she knew his body language as well as he felt he knew hers, by now, because she slowed for a moment, and pressed her forehead lightly to his, and then shifted and rolled them over, together, so that he was on top and her hair streamed over the blankets as she looked up at him. “Better?”

He took a slow breath. There was no chance that the monster of his night terrors would have done that, and the concern in her eyes, the fire carefully banked and restrained, made it impossible to fear her. “Much. Thanks.”

Next time, maybe, he would be healed enough to let her take the lead. It would be nice to think he could get there. But this time, what mattered most was knowing that she was willing not to, for his comfort.

That was far from the last bit of awkwardness or momentary setback they suffered that night, and a few times Ash was nearly ready to give up. Whenever it became too much, Ash would feel the panic try to descend for an instant, then remember the calming techniques that Admiral Cornwell had taught him. Pause and breathe, let the breath tie him to the present moment. Find something in that moment that he could latch onto against the rush of fear and memories both true and false. And L’Rell waited, as promised, holding herself distant and patient for however much time he needed, and then returning slowly and carefully, until the memories, at least for now, were overwritten completely with honest, unified pleasure.

Ash drifted for a while after that, relieved and sated and drowsy, and he felt as much as saw L’Rell fall asleep beside him. They’d both had very long days, but she had less to think about from hers, or at least less to doubt and regret. It had been safest, certainly, for both of them, to let Michael go off into the future alone, but Ash would never forget the way he’d felt watching her and the Discovery go without him. Section 31 wasn’t worth it. He’d just been too afraid that, if he went with them, Michael would discover she couldn’t forgive who he was and what had happened between them a year ago, after all, and then where would he be?

Better to let her go. Better to miss her forever but know they’d said goodbye on good terms and that he’d proved he could be as selfless as she could, rather than always grasping and wanting her to fix him, than to risk being out there together in the unknown and letting her hate and fear him. It was the coward’s way, maybe, but it was the best he could do under the circumstances.

_And then run off straight to another woman’s bed?_

He looked at L’Rell, her hair spilled like the darkness of space over the pillows and the scarring on her cheek and neck still clear in the dim light. As much as he could admit that was probably how some people would read the situation – he could picture the prim disapproval written all over Saru, for instance, if he were to somehow know – it wasn’t the same. _After all_ , he thought, enjoying the brief respite of gallows humor, _in a way, I loved her first_.

“I can feel your eyes on me, you know,” L’Rell muttered, and stretched and yawned before deigning to open her own, still hooded and drowsy, to look up at him. “Why are you not asleep?”

“I was just thinking. About today. About… everything.”

“About Michael Burnham.”

He was grateful for the dim, red light of the room, and the vain hope that it might hide his blush a little. Of course it wouldn’t, though, not against Klingon senses.

“It’s not… I wasn’t comparing you.”

L’Rell shot him a look that said she doubted this very much, and didn’t much care either way. That was fair. Even if he hadn’t been at that moment, similar thoughts had certainly arisen throughout the evening, whether or not he’d wanted them to, just not in the way she might be thinking.

“I know you think I made the wrong decision when I let her leave,” he began again.

“It was a foolish choice, to my mind.” L’Rell paused for a moment, then laughed and brushed her talons lightly down his chest. “I begin to see some possible advantages to it, however.”

“Advantages for you,” Ash teased, and caught her hand to kiss her knuckles.

“For both of us, I hope.” She sobered then. “But I know you would have preferred to spend this night with her. I cannot like that, but I can understand. And glad as I am to have you here by _my_ side instead, yes, I believe you chose wrongly in letting her go where you cannot follow.”

“I… thought it was the best thing to do at the time,” was all he could think of to say. “But now—” His throat closed, and for a horrible moment he thought L’Rell would just lay there and watch him cry, and, worse, watch him cry for his other lover. Voq, he remembered, would have scorned to let anyone, even L’Rell, see him weep, and his recollection of Klingon culture indicated that was a common feeling, if not universal. He remembered Michael, and how she had folded him against her shoulder and held him while he cried out his terror and agony as the memories started to rise up, after he’d first seen L’Rell following his escape. He would have done almost anything in that moment to have Michael there with him instead, or even to know she was on the same ship, or in the same _century_ …

“It is hard,” L’Rell said softly, after a long moment, “to not only let one’s matching heart go, but to be the one who pushes it away. A hard thing, but perhaps a worthy one, if done for the right reasons.”

Ash felt her hand brush his cheek, and guilt and shame washed over him again. Of course she understood that. She’d killed Voq with her own hands – twice, if he counted the surgery that had changed him into the mixed up creature who sat in front of her now – and hidden their infant child away from everyone, including herself, for his own protection. And she’d been alone with her pain all of those times, with no one at all to comfort her.

“Don’t be angry with me for saying so, if you can help it, but I’m not sure he was ever really worthy to be called your matching heart.”

“Worthy or not, he was mine. Just as, worthy or not, _you_ are mine, as well. Not mine in ownership, but…” she paused, struggling with the words even in her own language. “Mine in that my heart knows yours, and they beat together.”

“I get it.” And he did. Though a sense of ownership could come into play in Klingon romantic relationships, in a way that made Ash uncomfortable and a bit resentful toward some of Voq’s unthinking attitudes about his lover, in this, there was no question of possession here. The words there were, in any of the languages he knew, he wasn’t quite ready to consider choosing between, but... “My heart knows yours, too. Whatever it is that’s between us… it’s not what either of us were looking for. But it’s not going anywhere, either.”

“And you?” L’Rell watched him patiently in the darkness.

“Not right away, for sure. Not before morning.” He settled back down onto the pillows, and was relieved when, after a moment’s hesitation, L’Rell stretched out at his side and rested her cheek – the whole and unmarked one, he was glad to note – on his shoulder, one arm draped loosely over his chest. “Is that okay?”

“It is enough, for now.” Her breath brushed his chest as she shifted and sighed, and he moved his arm a bit to accommodate her shoulders, then pressed a kiss to the smooth ridges of her forehead.

In a lot of ways it would never be without risk between them, or easy. There would always be danger, whether it came from her side or his or all around, and in time, perhaps, one or both would decide this wasn’t what they wanted anymore. That being a little bit right but not quite everything the other one wanted was no longer fulfilling their needs, or that someone else suited them better, or… a thousand possibilities.

But right now, drifting to sleep in each other’s arms, it felt safe. It felt right, like it was as much as they could hope for – no more, no less. And like whatever it was, imperfect and difficult and strange, was enough.


End file.
